It Passes For A Road Trip These Days

I had a reason to put about 150 miles on the car this weekend, all country driving. Some forest, lots of fields awaiting a farmer's touch, a stream or two, modest ponds with old blown cattails on their edges, and some good company for much of it.

I may as well been having a bird watching tour. Within the first ten miles I slowed for two different pairs of hen turkeys. For some reason it felt like they waited for an oncoming vehicle before wandering across. No hurry, just a surreptitious glance to be sure I wasn't going to change either my speed or my lane and actually endanger them. They might have been wondering where the toms were, but who knows what goes on inside turkey brains?

Shortly after those, several crows circled the road overhead, leading me to wonder whether they were looking for dinner that was alive or already dead. 

Shortly after those, there was some roadkill on the shoulder. It was only briefly, and unidentifiable both for being flattish and all black, as well as for being in the bill of an adult bald eagle after three quick tries to secure it, which quickly flew off with whatever it was.

That really made my day.

Much of the rest of  my drive was full of the usual. Up here that means miscellaneous ducks, mostly mallards, Canada geese pairs already defending patches of high ground above a patch of water, trumpeter swan pairs swimming in those patches of water or heads immersed hunting for bottom vegetation, and the rare solo sandhill crane silhouetted on the ridge of fields still stubble from last fall. The three I spied were still very brown from the dirt they work through their naturally grey feathers to rid themselves of buggy pests wanting to hitch a ride with their meal.

I did see one more bird I never see except in hunting season, and then only after the hunt has been successful: a ring-necked pheasant. This one was very much alive, strutting around on school grounds still short from last year's mowing, the grounds themselves backing up to more trees and fields.

All in all, a nice cure for winter's residual cabin fever.